We’ve all got things that we fantasise about which, were they to happen in real life, would disgust or annoy us. Things that might get our genitals throbbing but which cause the moral part of our brains to rebel, and give us a post-fantasy stern talking to.

My most embarrassing fantasy isn’t sexual – it isn’t even exciting. But it’s the one I have spent the most time on in the last week. I close my eyes, block out all the things I should be thinking about, and spend a few minutes on my idle dream.

What’s my most embarrassing fantasy?

I dream of being saved. Not in a knight-in-shining-armour way: it’s far more tedious and practical than that.

I retreat to this shameful fantasy when I’ve had a bad week and everything seems to be going wrong. When I end every day miserable and exhausted and knowing that the next day will be the same. When I sit at my laptop, babbling nervously into a to-do list and panicking about all the things yet to be crossed off, I dream that – corny as it sounds – my prince will come.

He won’t marry me and whisk me away to a suburban idyll, he’ll just come to hold me, let me sob dramatically and unnecessarily on his shoulder, before making a few phone calls that melt all my troubles away.

When I’m down, and sad, I dream of a man who can do all the things I just don’t want to do. Ringing insurance companies, rewriting my CV, replying to emails that have languished unhappily at the bottom of my inbox. My prince: the pragmatic multi-tasker.

Because of all the things someone could ever give me – money, power, a nice thick cock and a regular eye-rolling fuck, the most valuable thing they could ever give me is time.

Why is this an embarrassing fantasy?

I am a capable, reasonable, competent human being. Honestly. Last year my boiler packed up and I managed to get a replacement without either

a) getting ripped off

b) leaving it so long I had to shower in freezing water or

c) sobbing wildly on my kitchen floor shouting “why won’t you just WORK you dogshit arsewipe pile of metal bollocks?!”

OK, maybe I did a teeny bit of c).

I’ve made it twenty nine years so far with only the occasional need of outside help – someone to show me where the stopcock is, the odd spider that I just can’t handle, that sort of thing. And yet despite my pathetic pride and determination to do nearly everything myself, I occasionally let my mind wander off into dreams of men who’ll do these things for me. Bleed radiators, clean kitchen cupboards, instruct solicitors and other such tedious bullshit.

I feel dirty and wrong for this, not because it’s sick or unusual in the way that many of my fantasies are. Not because it’s demeaning or degrading, but because I feel like this makes me a bad feminist. I mean, it’s not very independent, is it? The Suffragettes didn’t go through hell just so I could get a man to deal with my paperwork when I get too flustered. It goes against principles that mean a lot to me, and much of what I’ve worked for.

But still. When things get tricky, and I find myself wading through the mountain of DIY, admin and “please hold for an operator who can explain to you why we’ve suddenly doubled your gas bill” I’m not wishing for more internal strength, but for someone who’ll be strong on my behalf.

Fantasy vs reality

I’ve voiced this fantasy a few times – usually over a pint or two of gin and one of those terrifying crying attacks where your friends either cuddle you so no one can see the state you’re in or push you into the toilets to ‘get it out of your system.’

And occasionally, when I confess my fantasies of being saved, people have commented on the fact that it’s at direct odds with what I actually want in life. That if a guy came through for me on this kind of fantasy – if he cleared up my messes and cleaned my to-do list and took hold of the reins of my life, I would scream blue murder and banish him forever.

To which my reply is: of course. Of course. It’s a fantasy. Just as I don’t really want guys to beat me – I want them to spank me in a very specific way, with a very specific degree of pain, to the point where it’s hot and sexual but no further – I also want them to support me to just the right degree without ever taking away my own agency.

The most enjoyable thing about many fantasies is that if you really wanted to, you could make them come true: as with this one. But I haven’t made it come true – I just like to wallow in it. I like to sit and think and dream of my practical prince, while eschewing any kind of assistance that might make me look less than competent. So by thinking this I get to find out what my little heart actually desires – the difference between what I actually want and what I think I want.

He can still do the washing up though. There’s no shame in letting him do that.

I am not very sexy on weekday mornings. Not just in the sense that I have hair like a Muppet in a wind tunnel and breath like a Wetherspoons toilet, but also that if anyone touches me first thing in the morning I’m liable to cry. When my alarm goes off and I force my eyes open, the last thing I want is to have my tits touched: I will leap 20 feet into the air and run to the shower before you can say “I’m late I’m late I’m late.”

Life is exhausting and unfair. The fact that morning is usually when boys have their hardest, easiest erections is a cruel slap in the face: I feel ungrateful for saying ‘no’ to something so amazing, but at the same time… it’s 7 am, for fuck’s sake. I just want to drink my coffee, have a shower, and get the hell to work. Of course later in the day when my brain’s stopped caring how many minutes I have before I’m officially late, I feel like an idiot for wasting a lovely opportunity.

So I have to make opportunities elsewhen:

Just after work

I know people who change their clothes as soon as they get home, even if they don’t wear a suit to the office. The transition between work and home is an important way to strip the stresses and strains of the day from your body, shout “fuck that for a laugh”, and put on your relaxation face.

For me, post-work sex serves much the same purpose. I don’t want a guy to come home, sit on the sofa, and turn on the TV to wind down. Ideally I want him to come home, growl about what a shit day he’s had, then unzip his flies so I can sink eagerly to my knees and suck the stress out of him. If that fails, I’ll settle for a quickie up against the wall in the hallway, taking occasional glimpses of us in the mirror as he grabs, twists, pulls, and generally messes up the hair that looked so professional earlier.

During the evening

Sex has never, for me, been naturally associated with bedtime. Perhaps it’s down to my formulative teenage years, when the sex I had necessarily happened between 5pm and my 9pm curfew. I couldn’t sleep at my boyfriend’s house, ergo sex was an early-evening thing. As an adult, when sleeping with new people, I’d always prefer to have sex before we go to the pub, if at all possible, meaning I won’t be stuck trying to get a night bus at 3am after an unnecessarily long pre-sex preamble.

What I’m saying is that I like sex in the evening. I’d much rather be taken roughly over the coffee table before we watch Grand Designs than led gently to bed after Question Time for a half-hearted ‘I can barely keep my eyes open’ shag.

Evening sex is excellent – it inspires me to think more about when we might be able to fit a quick fuck in, and keeps me constantly on edge. I spend a lot of time appraising the boy as he sits hunched over his laptop on the sofa, cock visible through the thin fabric of his pyjamas. Coquettishly (but not that subtly) leaning up against him, rearranging my t-shirt so it shows enough cleavage to tempt him into putting an arm around me and squeezing.

The best thing about evening sex is that it doesn’t tend to become routine. Sex at bedtime can easily become part of my day in the same way as brushing my teeth or taking the bins out. Whereas evening sex can happen any time, anywhere – outside the bathroom, on the sofa, in the spare room as one of us ambushes the other while they’re putting away the laundry. Or, in my favourite scenario, bent over the bottom of the bed as I’m changing the duvet cover. Hands folded in the bed linen, gripping onto the fabric of the sheet as he pulls my jeans down just far enough, unzips his flies, and fucks me functionally until my legs give out. A fuck with just a few grunts, the feeling of him pumping spunk deep into my cunt, followed by a quick clean-up before I get back to the evening’s chores.

At the weekend

Because at the weekend I never have to worry about where I have to be and when. I have more time to do the things I need to do, so the things I want to do get more of a look in.

At the weekend I can wake up to him playing with my nipples and I can moan and play back, knowing that if I’m still tired we can go to sleep afterwards. At the weekend I can take my time when I suck his cock – edging him closer to orgasm then pulling away, grinning and watching him twitch with frustration. We can fuck in different ways, enjoying the pressure, the view, and the solid, tight feeling of each of our favourite positions. He can take his time to fuck me slowly but firmly, each stroke a teasing slap against my aching cunt as I will him to go faster, harder, to let me squeeze myself around his dick.

In the morning during the week we’re both desperate to get to work, and it matters if we don’t make it. At the weekend we’re desperate to come, but it doesn’t matter when we do it, as long as we both do.

I’ve always wanted to be good at finding romantic gifts. Small yet exquisitely formed tokens of affection that have my other half either weeping with joy or laughing in ecstatic delight.

But unfortunately, I suck. I umm and err if I have to buy a guy a birthday present, caught between something expensive, tasteful and brilliant and something expensive, rubbish, but hilarious.

In the end I usually end up declaring my romantic intentions via the means of drunk text messages or half-formed sonnets written in fridge magnets. But still. Very very occasionally I’ve bought, made or done things that have had the desired effect. Here are the top five romantic gifts that I have generously bestowed upon gentlemen I have known:

A blue rose

We’d had a row about whether or not blue roses existed. So, when I spent ages hunting down a blue rose, and triumphantly presenting it to him, it had the benefit that it was not only pretty cool-looking and unique, but it also harked back to a shared in-joke. If I hadn’t handed it to him while shouting “HA! In your FACE, Mr WRONG” it might well have got me laid.

A week later, as the water in the vase started to turn blue as well, I got the sneaking suspicion I’d been had.

A hand-drawn cartoon card

This one was FUCKING AMAZING, OK? Just, honestly. Ignore the fact that I draw about as well as a dog licking an inkwell. Forget that I had essentially drawn pictures of the two of us engaged in one of our numerous fights. It was pretty and big and took time and effort – I’d even coloured it in! And hardly gone over the lines!

Pizza and a blow job

What can I say? Sometimes I’m just a mind reader.

A limerick about his cock

This one actually counts for about fifty, because that is how many limericks I have written about this one boy’s cock. Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships, he has a penis that inspires a thousand poets.

Top tip if you’re thinking of recreating this, though – should you feel inspired to write a birthday limerick about your loved-one’s genitals, be sure to write it somewhere other than in their actual birthday card. Otherwise you might find yourself having to dive across the room to whip it out of his mother’s hands when she loudly exclaims ‘oh, how sweet, do you mind if I read it?’

A games console

Now I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking “hey, Gotn, I thought the message of this blog was going to be about how you don’t have to spend loads of money in order to make romantic gestures!”

Well, you don’t. But that’s not to say that spending money can’t sometimes be a really bloody romantic gesture. Especially if it’s money you don’t really have, that you’re selflessly spending just because the love of your life wants something bizarre and out of your budget range.

The most romantic present I ever gave someone was a games console. Not an Xbox or a Playstation: this was much much better. Months before this boy’s birthday, we’d been watching the shopping channel with friends when an utterly amazing product came on. It was an old-fashioned plug-directly-into-the-telly console that had modern copies of ancient games. Heavily pixellated, retro-awesome tat. Needless to say, he was excited:

“It’s even got a gun! You can do clay pigeon shooting!”
“With blocky, clunky clay pigeons?”
“EXACTLY.”

So. It was settled. I’d save up the pitiful amount of money that I had (I was poor enough at the time that the 40-odd quid this thing cost was a serious budgetary commitment) and ordered one. As his birthday neared, I was quivering with nervous anticipation. I worried that he might hear me whispering the secret in my sleep. Every time he mentioned his birthday, and the fun we were going to have in the evening, I almost exploded with the desire to say “and we can play with your birthday present because it’s AMAZING.”

As the day dawned, I could barely speak for excitement, imagining the look of pure, squirming love on his face as he’d open it, turn to me, and beg me to stay with him forever. This was no ordinary love gift: it was the One True Gift that would cement me forever in his heart.

Have you guessed the ending yet? Because I certainly didn’t. When I met him in the morning, babbling excitedly about his party at which I’d get to present him with The Gift, he hit me with a conversational bombshell:

“So I met this girl over the weekend. We’re going out now.”
“But… you’re shagging me!”
“I know. But… we’re not really going out, are we?”
“Aren’t we?”

So there you are, kids – there’s the moral. It’s not that ‘love costs nothing’, it’s ‘beware of forking out too much on expensive trinkets, because if your partner is going to dump you then no amount of consumer electronics will stop them.’

I gave him the console anyway. Turns out it was quite shit.

Here are two apparently conflicting statements. I would like you to read both of them and decide which one is true:

• Heterosexual women are incredibly complex and almost impossible for men to understand.
• Heterosexual women all share an identical dream of the man they would like to be with.

Well done to anyone who said ‘neither’.

I don’t like dealing in absolutes. Unless we’re talking about pure mathematics, we’re pretty much bound to be wrong. All women are not X, and all men are not Y. Yes, we’re all pretty complex, but pretending that one particular gender is impossible to understand is like claiming we can never know what someone’s favourite colour is.

The only way you could go through life believing the opposite sex (or, indeed, any arbitrary subset of human beings) to be incomprehensible is if you refuse to ever speak to any of them.

So that’s number 1 dealt with. On to number 2 – the ‘ideal man’ scenario.

Every woman’s dream

Today the Sunday Times published a list entitled ‘Every woman’s dream‘ – a handy checklist for straight men on what sort of person they needed to be in order to proudly wear their ‘Mr Right’ badge. I should point out that the addition of words such as ‘straight’ and ‘heterosexual’ are mine, and added for clarity. According to this Sunday Times list, women who identify as anything other than ‘straight’ either don’t exist or were not consulted when their clearly thorough and painstaking research was conducted.

Here’s what the Sunday Times thinks ‘every woman’s dream’ man does:

“He has a well-developed protective instinct, as in the arm flung across the passenger seat in the event of a sudden stop.”

Protective? Or just a bit odd? If he was both protective and sensible he’d have checked that I was wearing a seatbelt in the first place. Moreover, I have survived for twenty nine years on this planet without men flinging their arms around me, shepherding me across the road, or cutting up my fish before I eat it lest I choke on a stray bone – I can protect myself fairly well, thanks.

“He can carry off fur trims, designer flip-flops, hair ties and hairbands, jewellery, cashmere hoodies and a man bag.”

There might be some women who dream of a man with a honed sense of fashion, but some of us couldn’t give a Fcuk. I’m happy if a boy is capable of putting his trousers on before we leave the house, and sensible enough to wear a coat if it looks like it might rain. And as for carrying a ‘man-bag’ – I despise the arbitrary inclusion of gender with this particular accessory. He does not eat with a ‘man-fork’ or wash in a special ‘man-bath’. My dream man just carries a ‘bag’.

“He is not scared to buy you underwear in M&S in an emergency – but will not step inside Farrow & Ball in any circs.”

I don’t know what Farrow & Ball is, but my dream man certainly doesn’t use the word ‘circs’.

“He considers the dustbins his department, but can also put flowers in a vase in a crisis.”

A man who considers the dustbins ‘his department’ is likely to be the sort of man who considers the hoovering to be ‘my department’, and is therefore probably an utter prick. My actual dream man considers all household chores to be a tedious waste of both of our time, but something we might as well do together to finish them quickly.

“He can buy presents without consulting his secretary/sister.”

Interesting. That’s true – my dream man is capable of doing that. But I wonder, dear readers, why the word ‘secretary’ was so casually thrown in here. Could it be possible that the author is assuming a) quite a few men have secretaries, because we are after all still living in the 1950s and b) all secretaries are women, hence why a man might turn to one in order to seek help with a gift?

In reality, men are perfectly capable of choosing gifts for people they know. Present-selection is a simple task, along the lines of ‘buying one’s own clothes’ and ‘paying the gas bill’ – it is not a rare skill possessed only by women and the crème de la crème of masculinity.

“He can look after three kids on his own.”

This, Sunday Times, is not ‘dream man’ material. This is ‘absolutely fucking basic’ material. If you have three children with someone and they are incapable of looking after them without you there to supervise, it’s not a shame: it’s an outright tragedy and one on which you should probably seek advice. Men are not bumbling, child-fearing buffoons – they are grown adults. And, like women, they produce and rear children.

“He drinks but never gets drunk.”

This dream man has a liver that surpasses our current expectations of human biology.

“He is open to yoga and meditation, Pilates and hypnotherapy…”

Because women are, naturally, obsessed with exercise techniques and borderline woo.

“He can do basic DIY and plumbing.”

Fair enough on this one, to be honest. My dream man can do this. But that’s because my dream man is a human, and I think it’s quite important that humans are capable of carrying out basic household tasks without crying in a corner.

“He finds strong women sexy.”

I’ll finish on this point, because it’s the most outrageously contradictory of the lot.

My own ‘dream man’, as it happens, does find strong women sexy. But then I’d bloody well hope he would because I am a strong woman, and if he didn’t find me sexy then he’d no more be my dream than he’d be a carton of cottage cheese. Clearly what this means is ‘your dream man should find you sexy’. A tautological statement if ever I heard one.

But if he finds strong women so sexy, why on earth is he insisting that the bins are ‘his department’? If he thinks I’m strong, he should realistically understand that I’m capable of emptying a dustbin without being permanently traumatised. I’ll be honest, Sunday Times, not only does the notion of a ‘dream man’ belong firmly in the dustbin that is ‘his department’, but the guy you’re describing sounds like an incomparable, inconsistent prick.

If you haven’t yet read it, you might want to see this article first: “Date a boy who travels”

Date a boy who travels. Date a boy who has an Oyster card or a car or one of those Segway things. Watch his face light up as he successfully navigates his way from A to B. Sigh blissfully at his ability to do things that you could only dream of.

Date a boy who treasures experience over toys. Who wouldn’t be seen dead in a Rolex. Date a boy who cares about memories, and this one time in Thailand when he and his mates got off their tits on mushrooms and cavorted wildly in the sea.

You might find this boy in a bookshop, a Starbucks, a back-alley, or somewhere on the internet. Offer to buy him a drink. Make sure it’s something unusual so that you can please him, while simultaneously pretending you’re just as interesting as he is.

His twitter account will be riotously colourful, and will make you feel stupid for not knowing what ‘chai’ is. He’ll study books and magazines that you probably don’t like, but his excitement for these things is a tangible reminder of just how much better he is than you.

Listen to his stories. He’ll have shitloads of them, and they’ll all be a thousand times better than anything you could say. Feel warm inside as he regales you with yet another tale of something incomprehensibly exciting. Cross your fingers and perhaps one day he’ll deign to let you join him.

Date a boy so that you can live vicariously through him. He will teach you what excitement feels like, his stories of risk-taking will throb powerfully through your veins, and every single thing he introduces you to will be new and fresh and good and superior. Date a boy who tells you how you feel. And know that he is right.

Wait for him to propose, which he’ll do if and only if you’ve proved that you’re capable of living the same life as him. You’ll get married on a beach somewhere, or in the middle of a crumbling temple, or while bungee-jumping into a pool of understandably terrified dolphins. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Let this magical traveling wonder-boy show you how to live your life.

Date a boy who travels. Or not.

Or don’t do any of this. Because although this article has been shared around the internet like it’s a template for The Happy Life Of A Straight Woman, straight women are in fact not all identikit man-hunting machines. Nor do we languish in a chrysalis-like state, with no ambition or desire of our own save the hope that one day – one day – our prince will come and shape us into more exciting human beings.

Date a boy who likes you. Date a boy you like. Date a boy who watches some of the same TV shows as you. Date a boy who hates your taste in music but smiles indulgently when you drag him to a karaoke night. Date a boy who values experiences, possessions, trips abroad, Rolex watches, food, drink, politics, or whatever. Date a boy who values you.

Date a boy who sees you as an individual rather than a bucket into which he can pour his own ideas. Date a boy who knows you’re not a piece of clay to be moulded and shaped by someone who knows better. Date a boy who is interested in your stories, who brings you on his adventures and wants you to bring him on yours.

Date a boy who travels, a boy who sings, a boy who cries, a boy who skateboards, a boy who shouts at the TV when Question Time is on. Date a boy who eats nachos like a pig, who is teetotal, who drinks like a fish, who is a domestic wizard or who never does the washing up. Date a boy who teaches reading to children, or watches Game of Thrones with one hand down his pants. Who calls you ‘princess’ and won’t fart in front of you, or a boy who laughs when you dribble yoghurt down your chin. Date a boy who couchsurfs, a boy who holidays at Butlins, or a boy whose idea of adventure is a trip to the 24-hour supermarket with a printed discount voucher.

Date a boy who likes you. Date a boy you like.